Well, I finally got to look at the 1964 safari in person. It was pretty trashed inside. The outside looked to be pretty straight, and i think all the doors were there. It was parked next to a thick bunch of Bamboo, and it was hard to get a good look at the back and curbside of it. There was a large patch pop-rivited to the front and streetside corner.
The inside was gutted except for part of the kitchen and bathroom. What was left was pretty weatherbeaten. The walls had been painted white (shouldn't '64 be zolotone?), and then someone had started painting gloss black. Most of the windows were either broken, or had been replaced with frosted 'bathroom' style glass.
The floor was mostly completely covered with 1/4 plywood, and a layer of outdoor carpet. What I could see of the original floor didn't look good.
I wanted a project to build a custom interior on, just to play around with woodworking and have some fun this winter, but I think the rotten floor is what really scared me away. It just looked like too much work to do the floor and the interior. I've been following the floor replacement threads and that doesn't look like much fun. Is there anyway to do a floor replacement without pulling off the shell?
I feel sorry for it though. I know the guy's been trying to get rid of it for a while. I hate to see an AS just rotting away waiting for someone to come give it life again. I can't imagine who'd want to take on a project of that magnitude, but I have a feeling he'd let it go for a song to anyone who did.
Detroit is a little far away for me right now But what we're thinking is that if we could find an AS that needs a new interior, not in quite as bad a shape as the one I looked at today (the only thing going for it was that it was cheap), that would be heading down the right road.
I have another question, probably Shari could answer. The Safari we looked at was supposed to be a 64. Now that the vintage photo archives are back up, I looked at the 64's there, and all of them have a curbside kitchen. This one had a streetside kitchen (what was left of it anyway). It also had sliders in the upper cabinets, while in the photo archives 63's had sliders, but 64's have doors that lift up. Is it pretty common to have carry over from one year to another, or to have a completely different layout than the standard? The guy showed me the page from the manual with the layout, and it was with the kitchen on the streetside, and he mentioned that his was reversed.
The easiest way to distinguish a '63 from a '64 is by the number of panels in the end caps...'63 has 7 and a '64 has 5.
With regards to carry-overs from one year to the next...I'm convinced they did have some of that some years, but something like the number of end caps wasn't usually one of those things.Also, the '63s I've seen had the gallery areas streetside and the '64s are curb side. I've not seen the slider doors on a '64 before, but I know they were standard on the '63s...I suspect that the one you are looking at was a late '63 that may have been registered in '64...thus the confusion. Another thought is that there was also a 22' Flying Cloud model in '63...could it be something other than a Safari? Do you have the serial number? That could clear things up a bit...good luck on your quest!
The best way to ID a trailer's model year is the serial number. Do you know this Safari's serial number? It may have been a 1963 model sold in 1964 and thus titled or registered in 1964.
That said, it is possible this Safari was an extremely early 1964 model. Some components, equipment and features like cabinets, hardware, appliances and windows were carried over into the next year's models to deplete stock on hand. I do recall recently seeing photographs of a very early 1964 Safari with the 1964 front end lift up wood doors that looked like they were installed on a 1963 interior fiberglas front end cap. The doors were not tall enough to hide the top 2 inches of the arching fiberglass compartment, which was visible above them. It looked more like a paste up job than a finished product.
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But what we're thinking is that if we could find an AS that needs a new interior, not in quite as bad a shape as the one I looked at today (the only thing going for it was that it was cheap), that would be heading down the right road.
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